On a clear summer day in July, New Mexico State University’s Agricultural Science Center at Farmington buzzed with activity across its sprawling 254-acre research farm.


 
Interns Korbin Nakai and Melvin Cooley stationed themselves in the vineyard, pruning leafy green vines. Farm manager Dallen Begay drove a plot combine across a field of waist-high heirloom wheat, harvesting grain. A trio of graduate research assistants – Brandon Francis, Emiliano McLane and Bhimsen Shresth – collected data for their thesis projects.


 
Meanwhile, fellow intern, Gabrielle Henderson, tended to a small orchard of young peach trees inside a greenhouse, taking careful measurements.


 
The trees are part of a long-running project headed by Utah State University researcher Reagan Wytsalucy, who has dedicated her entire career to restoring traditional crops on Indigenous lands – including fruits like Native American peaches.


 
“There’s a lot of youth my age and younger who have no idea that these peaches even exist, that our people actually ate peaches as a large staple in our diet,” Wytsalucy said. “My goal is to repopulate tribal communities with this fruit tree and rehabilitate the orchards that are either no longer existent or struggling to maintain existence.”


 
Wytsalucy, an assistant professor for Utah State’s Extension office, is one of more than three dozen collaborators and cooperators actively engaged in research with the Agricultural Science Center at Farmington. Today, the center collaborates with an array of public and private organizations in nine states, plus New Mexico. 


 
“Working with folks from other institutions and organizations elevates our research enterprise,” said Kevin Lombard, the center’s research director. “It also allows us to share and expand our knowledge and contribute to scientific breakthroughs that support our mission to improve communities across New Mexico.”
 


Lombard and his researchers have also forged partnerships with experts working to revive and preserve traditional agricultural practices in Native American communities throughout the Four Corners region. Those partners include Wytsalucy and the founders of a nearby educational farm dedicated to sustaining Navajo farming methods.


 
Native American peaches


 
Wytsalucy, a Navajo researcher who grew up in Gallup, teamed up with Lombard in 2022. By then, she had completed the initial phase of her pursuit to restore Native American peaches on Indigenous lands. Now, she wanted to expand her research and start a network of experimental peach orchards, using seeds germinated from Navajo, Hopi and Zuni origins.
She reached out to Lombard, who agreed to house a set of test trees at the science center in Farmington, one of four test sites. Currently, the center has about 50 tree seedlings.


 
“Right now, we’re germinating trees to expand on the genetic population that I originally gathered from 2017 to 2019,” she said. “Kevin and his team are basically the current caretakers of the trees at this time.”


 
The project gives interns like Henderson, a college student, exposure to hands-on research and field experience, Lombard said.


 
“Gabrielle has done an excellent job collecting data and caring for the trees all summer,” he said. “Her contributions will have a major impact on the project, and she will carry this experience throughout her educational journey.”


 
The project also teaches younger generations about the tragic history of Native American peaches. For centuries, peach orchards flourished on Navajo lands in the Four Corners area. But, around 1863, the United States government destroyed many of the orchards when Navajo groups refused to join the “Long Walk” to Fort Sumner in New Mexico.


 
Today, Wytsalucy said, much of the history surrounding these small, elusive peaches is lost.


 
“The Navajo people traded peaches just as much as corn, beans and squash,” she said. “Through my research, I hope to bring back the knowledge of something that nobody knows exists.”


 
Traditional Navajo farming


 
One of the science center’s closest collaborators sits along the San Juan River in the community of Nenahnezad, about 15 miles west of Farmington. 


 
Navajo Ethno-Agriculture, a 14-acre educational farm founded by Navajo Nation members Gloria and Harry Lane and their children, Nonabah and Bruce, teaches Navajo culture to young adults and children through traditional farming and bilingual education. 


 
A relationship between the farm and science center developed in the aftermath of the Gold King Mine spill of 2015, Lombard said, and has blossomed in the years since. Students in the farm’s college courses and youth camps regularly visit the science center to see research in action, and Lombard’s interns split their time between his center and the farm.


 
“Our interns work here part-time to get a feel for how an agricultural science center operates, and then they go down part of the week to the Lanes’ farm to get a whole different perspective,” he said.


 
Lombard attributes the lasting partnership to Nonabah Lane, a Navajo educator and environmental sustainability specialist. Before her passing last year, Lane often collaborated with the science center and even helped secure a grant from the Nation Science Foundation to fund an NMSU graduate research assistant, Emiliano McLane, who is now studying agrovoltaics.


 
“Nonabah would come up here, and we would brainstorm projects all the time,” Lombard said. “It’s such a loss for the community that she’s no longer here.”


 
Since establishing Navajo Ethno-Agriculture, the Lanes have passed down agricultural knowledge steeped in 400 years of tradition to hundreds of students eager to embrace their cultural heritage. One of those students is the acclaimed Navajo chef Justin Pioche, who has worked at the farm for three years as part of an AmeriCorps program.


 
A rising culinary star, Pioche runs Pioche Food Group, a Navajo food service company that stages pop-up dinners and catering events throughout the region and beyond. He launched the business in 2020 with his sister, Tia, who once interned at the science center, and earned a James Beard Award nomination for best chef in the Southwest earlier this year. He became involved with AmeriCorps and Navajo Ethno-Agriculture through family encouragement. 


 
“I was super-interested in learning about agriculture,” he said over the summer.


 
Pioche spent his first years on the farm learning all aspects its operation. Now, he’s teaching what he learned from the Lanes to other students and interns, including many from NMSU – work he said has deepened his passion for food.


 
“Gloria and Harry have taught me a lot about our history and culture, land rights, water rights, native rights, irrigation and so much more,” he said. “I respect farmers more than ever now and understand the importance of passing down this knowledge to younger generations.”


 
A version of this story first published in the fall 2023 issue of ACES Magazine. For more stories, visit       nmsu.news/aces-magazine-fall-2023.


The full article can be seen at https://newsroom.nmsu.edu/news/nmsu-s-farmington-science-center-supports-efforts-to-promote-indigenous-agricultural-practices/s/eb655e29-0c5c-495e- a190-67a916489fc6